Kind: captions
Language: en
[Applause]
[Music]
this is the largest body of water in
california it's about 25 kilometers wide
by 55 kilometers long you can't even see
the other end of this lake
and it's home to the most diverse number
of birds anywhere in the continental u.s
besides big bend in texas and here's the
thing
this body of water is here by accident
let me explain back in about the 1900s
there were engineers working on
irrigating the fields of the american
southwest
they were using the water from the
colorado river but they were also trying
to prevent it from flooding from
flooding all this farmland
now in 1905
they got it a little bit wrong and also
the colorado river flooded its banks and
used the channels they were building
basically to flood this whole plane now
this plane is actually
about 70 meters over 200 feet below sea
level we're at one of the lowest points
in north america so the water flooded in
here the entire volume of the colorado
river flooded into this plane for about
two years before they were able to stop
the flooding and what you're left with
is the lake that you can see today
the low-lying area where the salton sea
now is was formed due to tectonic
activity we're very close to the san
andreas fault and that also means
there's magma very close to the surface
here sometimes that heat boils up
through mud volcanoes like these
so
[Music]
so
[Music]
and we're actually taking advantage of
this heat using seven geothermal plants
which together generate enough
electricity for over a hundred thousand
homes
now initially people thought that this
lake was just gonna dry up this is one
of the hottest driest parts of the
country
but it didn't
the water didn't go away
and so then people got the idea that
they would take advantage of this little
accident and try to dress this whole
place up like a new riviera
here is truly a miracle in the desert a
whole new outlet for the crowded
millions in big cities a palm springs
with water here is where you can find
the good life in the sun
today the salton river and for a time it
worked in the 50s and 60s they started
building towns here and resorts and
celebrities came to this place and
people would enjoy the water they
actually added fish to this lake and the
fishing was so good you could throw in a
hook and pull out a fish without even
putting any bait on it of course there
was lots of bird life and and people
really enjoyed themselves it looked as
though everything was going great
until
well the lake started to turn a little
bit you see the only real inflows of
water to this lake are from agricultural
runoff and they bring salt into the lake
and there is no outflow for this lake
because it is so low it's already one of
the lowest points in north america it's
below sea level
so all that happens is the water then
evaporates leaving the salt behind and
the salinity of this water increases
it's now about 50 grams per liter which
is a quite a bit more than sea water and
that makes it hard for the fish to
survive so
there are massive fish die offs which
create quite a smell it's a bit stinky
over here and algal blooms have also
occurred making the water this ugly
brown color i wouldn't really want to go
swimming in there and the resorts have
all closed up there's only a few people
left here
you know when you drive around here you
find those old resort areas places where
people thought you know it was going to
be the next riviera and now
they are deserted
ghost towns and there's boats abandoned
up on the shore
it's
a kind of depressing place
which is strange given
the kind of natural beauty
some people might think that
letting this lake evaporate is the right
thing to do it's the natural thing to do
it returns it to its state from before
we accidentally flooded it back in 1905.
but if you look back a bit further
you find that there really did
used to be a lake here a lake which came
and went but for the last several
thousand years
the lake was here more often than it was
not and
it was filled up to a higher level
this whole story makes me think two
things
first
as humans we have incredible power to
drastically shape the earth we can cause
entire seas to disappear
and we can create
seas
and the other thing
is that in the absence of of effort in
the absence of our caring
things tend towards disorder things
naturally fall apart
and i feel like if we don't do anything
here the natural
result is going to be messy and ugly i
mean if you just look around at what's
happened to the towns that have been
abandoned and the homes which are
crumbling
it looks like a disaster area it looks
as bad as chernobyl but there was no
nuclear accident here there's just a
lack
of caring
and i think this applies to more than
just this sea
you know
we have this kind of
duty to
recognize what we do matters and if we
don't care if we don't put in the effort
it's not going to turn out very well
i think that's the lesson of the sultan
c
you